The Right Questions framework is a process and set of tools to help people who want to:

• Lead themselves and others well
• Think analytically and critically
• Develop effective strategic plans and achieve goals
• Set priorities and make better decisions

The Right Questions framework is based upon the main interrogative words in the English language, linking each to a key theme and further questions:

Interrogative	Use	Application
Why	Reason	Values, principles, priorities, passions
Where	Place	Situation (past and present), vision
What	Thing	Mission, end-state, success, USP
Which	Selection	Options, courses of action, risks, reflection
How	Manner	Plan, route, tasks, resources
Who	Person	Self, team, network, relationships
When	Time	Timing, programming, prioritisation

Navigating The Right Questions Website

To help you navigate the posts that explain the framework, follow the links under the headings below that correspond to the individual posts.

Beside each post, on the right sidebar, you will see the main categories that relate to the posts below. These are:

• The Right Questions (Background and Overview)
• Why (Values)
• What (Mission)
• Where (Situation and Vision)
• Which (Options, Risk and Opportunity)
• Who (Individual, Team and Network)
• How (Goals, Planning and Resources)
• When (Timing and Programming)

The Quest – Using The Right Questions on a Journey of Self-Discovery and Fulfilment

Leadership Development: Master the Top Leadership and Life Skills

Better lead in life and work to maximise your success. Sign up and access materials for free!

Introduction to The Right Questions Concept

What Are The Right Questions to Ask Yourself and Others?

Overview of The Right Questions Framework

What are The Right Questions for Decision Making and Strategic Planning?

Stage 1: Strategic Framing

The initial questions of why (principles, priorities and passions) where (situation and vision) and what (mission, success criteria) provide the strategic framing for any plans we make. The quality of the options we develop to achieve success and the effectiveness of our planning depends largely on the development of the overall strategy.

Why? Values

Principles, purpose, passions, priorities

How to Discover Your Top 3 Personal Values

Where? Situation and Vision

Situational Analysis – where am I now?

How to do a SWOT Analysis

Vision – where am I going?

What is a Vision Statement and Why are They Important?

What? Mission, success and end-state

What is a Mission or Success Statement and Why Do You Need One?

Stage 2: The Reflection Point

The second part or stage is called the ‘reflection point’. In every decision making cycle you consider your options in the light of the situation, the risks and opportunities. This reflection point either takes you back to Stage 1, and a further iteration of refining the Strategic Framing, or onto Stage 3, Developing a Plan, where an actionable plan can be created for the chosen course of action, fulfilling the strategy.

Which: Route, risk, review, reflections

Which is the Best Course of Action?

Stage 3: Developing a Plan

The third section on planning uses the questions how, who and when to explore the detail needed to deliver on your desired course of action in alignment with your overall strategy.

How? Planning, Resources

How to Set Goals, Tasks and Milestones When Planning

When? Timing, programming and prioritisation

The Secret of Perfect Timing

Who? Self, team and network

Know Yourself: The Importance of Self-Awareness

How To Leverage Your Network And Build a Team

Case studies, examples and application of The Right Questions

The Right Questions in Organisations

How To Write A Business Case

How do you develop a new business system and create a process flow chart?

The Right Questions in Coaching Individuals

How to Make an Action Plan to Achieve Your Goal

The Seven Most Important Questions You Should Ask When Considering a Career Change

How to Make a Successful New Year’s Resolution

So, having established in previous posts the background to The Right Questions and an idea of their importance, we can now get an overview of The Right Questions and how they are applied to strategic planning and achieving goals, both in a personal or business context. The questions come in an order of sorts but the process of asking The Right Questions is also iterative and cyclical. In other words, the answer to one question is likely to inform an answer to another, and even after we have worked through all the questions we will generally go back and revisit the others to refine our answers.

It is beneficial to explore the questions in two broad groups. The first is comprised of the where, what and why, and these encompass the strategic framing of a situation. The second group is made up of the questions how, when, and who and these help us develop a specific plan within the aforementioned strategic frame.

The two groups are joined by ‘which’ as this question deals with the concepts of options and risk. After looking at the overall strategic picture we use ‘which’ to explore courses of action from which we can choose an option to develop into a more detailed plan. We then return to this same question to weigh the risks as the plan progresses. Looking at these options and risks are the key decision points and can lead us to return through the strategic framing or planning loops again.

Taken all together these seven questions create a template for strategic planning and also become a decision-making process that follows a figure of eight cycle, as demonstrated in the diagram below.

“I keep six honest serving-men, (They taught me all I knew); Their names are What and Why and When, And How and Where and Who.” Rudyard Kipling

STRATEGIC FRAMING

Why? (Values and Priorities)

The ‘Why?’ represents our values. Our values are our identity; the things at our centre that define why we have the vision in the first place, why we do the things we do, why we attract certain people. They are our beliefs and worldview. These are often things we hold in common with others at one level but the particular combination and application of the values make them unique to us. Knowing our principles shows us what we value most and therefore it also helps us to prioritise and make good decisions.

Where? (Situation and Vision)

‘Where?’ is the present location and the future destination, the situation and the vision. We look at whence we have come from and whither are we going as our journey is bracketed by these ideas of ‘where’. When you get out a map the first thing you do is identify where you are and get your bearings; only once you have done this do you plan to move. And when you move, you don’t want to wander aimlessly (movement in itself is not progress), there needs to be a destination, something we are aiming for. This destination is the dream, the thing that stokes our passion and gives us our drive.

What? (Mission)

‘What?’ represents the mission, the reality of what we are going to do. The mission is the bottom line, the tangible measured difference that we are to make. To work out the mission we need to define success so that we know our finish line. We can then sum this up in a pithy and memorable way to get our mission statement.

Leadership Development: Master the Top Leadership and Life Skills

Better lead in life and work to maximise your success. Sign up and access materials for free!

REFLECTION INTERSECTION

Which? (Options, Risk and Reflection)

Options

We have to choose which way to go and therefore ‘Which?’ deals with the idea of selection. First, we have to generate a range of courses of options we can choose from. This is a creative process, requiring divergent thinking, and taking time to step out of the purely logical process in order to examine unorthodox ways of problem-solving. Generating these options is something we can do before looking at the how, when and who questions. We are generally faced with various strategy options and we have to select a route by assessing relevant factors.

Risk

One of the major factors affecting a decision is risk. If a venture is deemed too risky it is the surest thing that will stop us from acting, no matter how attractive the option first seemed. To make good decisions we need to identify, assess, mitigate risk and then manage the risk accordingly. Capacity for risk varies between people and situations so it is important to remember that this is an ongoing process of management. At the same time we don’t want to become defensive, timid or risk averse; achieving bold visions means taking risks. We just need to make sure we have counted the cost before we commit ourselves.

Reflection

The option does not have to be perfect. What we are looking for is the minimal viable product (MVP) approach to problem-solving. When an idea good enough to add some planning to it, but then we need to test it. This is where the ‘which’ question becomes the reflection point in the interlinking loops between strategic framing and planning. We test our ideas, reflect and learn from them, then adjust our plans and go again.

PLANNING

How? (Strategy, Goals, Planning and Resources)

‘How?’ is the method or plan by which we achieve the mission. Goals and activities support the overall strategy and propel us towards our dream. Breaking down the route into manageable steps gives us the basis of an action plan and makes the dream an achievable reality. Once we have worked out the detail of each task it is much easier to assess the correct resources we need for each step and therefore, by adding up these resources, we can get a better estimate of the total resources we need to achieve the whole mission.

When? (Timing and Programming)

It is no surprise that ‘When?’ refers to time. Timing is critical. Choosing the right time makes the difference between success and failure and it takes an equal measure of planning and wisdom to know when to implement strategies, to go for goals and ultimately achieve missions. Time is key to planning and is the one truly limited resource. As we overlay our plan with time we create a programme with milestones that help us to measure our progress towards our goal.

Who? (Roles, Team, Structure and Network)

The ‘Who?’ is primarily about the roles different people fulfil, the makeup of our team, the structure of our organisation and the people we connect within our personal network. Sometimes we have a mission and then we go out and put together a team and therefore we need to know what we are looking for. At other times we may need an existing team to adopt a new strategy. In this case, we need to know how best to place people as we re-structure the existing team. Even if we are operating alone, not having a specific team or organisation, we always have a unique network of contacts to draw upon. People are always involved one way or another on our journey and they are the most important resource that we can draw upon.

Now that we have looked at an overview of The Right Questions we will look at each one in greater detail in future posts.

If you want to know more about the background and evidence for the approach I recommend you read:

Beyond the 5Ws: Ask questions like a philosopher, answer as a visionary

If you want to start going through the process I recommend you ‘start with why’ (like Simon Sinek) and read the following:

What are your personal values?

Book Review

Having recently listened to Good Strategy, Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt on Audible I am reminded by why it is considered one of the best books on thinking strategically. Not surprisingly it’s a top 10 best seller on Amazon in Strategy and Competition and is widely recommended as a must-read for leaders and CEOs.

One thing I particularly like about the book, is that it can be applied very widely. Many books on strategy are, perhaps unsurprisingly, specifically focussed on business and competitive advantage (such as the seminal work by Michael E. Porter). Rumelt, in contrast, develops a strategic theory and approach  that spans sectors and can be applied to pretty much anything in life. At the same time it is not as complex as Game Theory or as hard to apply.

The author has an academic background but he combines his analytic analysis with practical application and writes in a clear and engaging way. In the book Rumelt clearly defines what he means by both good and bad strategy and then illustrates both with insightful examples. His strategic approach is to assess the situation and provide coordinated action to overcome challenges. This is reflected in his approach to the book as within the pages he assesses bad strategy and gives actions to assist the development of good strategy. In essence the method is very simple, and this simplicity is another one of the books strengths.

Book Summary, Quotes and Analysis

Essentially Rumelt defines strategy as a coherent response to a challenge based on insight.

“A strategy coordinates action to address a specific challenge.”

This definition slightly differs from the norm. A usual definition, as found in the Oxford Dictionary, might read: “A plan of action designed to achieve a long-term or overall goal” (2019)

Between the definitions there is commonality on coordinated action but Rumelt emphasises the need to overcome challenges, rather than considering timeframe, in his definition. This is important as he describes what he considers to be either ‘good’ or ‘bad’.

Part 1: Good and Bad Strategy

In Part 1 Rumelt outlines what he means by good and bad strategy and discusses why, in his view, there is a lack of the good. At the end of the section he presents his theory of creating good strategy.

Good Strategy

In the book good strategic design is described thus:

“A good strategy defines a critical challenge. What is more, it builds a bridge between that challenge and action, between desire and immediate objectives that lie within grasp.”

Bad Strategy

Whereas a bad stratagem is explained as:

“Bad strategy is long on goals and short on policy or action. It assumes that goals are all you need. It puts forward strategic objectives that are incoherent and, sometimes, totally impracticable. It uses high-sounding words and phrases to hide these failings.”

This type of stratagem is described as a “dog’s dinner of strategic objectives” and full of “fluff”. Fluff a string of complex sounding words “masking an absence of substance.” On closer inspection, fluffy words and strategies do not actually amount to anything.

One problem highlighted is that poor planning often stems from a focus on vision and values statements (which as also often fluff) without acknowledging the situation or actions needed to progress. This I would agree to, but I also still believe that vision and values statements are very important (when done well) to help inspire action and give a framework for decision-making.

Poor strategists also fail to properly identify problems and overcome challenges:

“Bad strategy may actively avoid analyzing obstacles because a leader believes that negative thoughts get in the way. Leaders may create bad strategy by mistakenly treating strategy work as an exercise in goal setting rather than problem-solving. Or they may avoid hard choices because they do not wish to offend anyone—generating a bad strategy that tries to cover all the bases rather than focus resources and actions.”

Again, this is something I would agree with. The emphasis on situational analysis (identifying the challenges and opportunities) is key to the Strategic Framework in the Right Questions approach to ensure that there is not vision without an overarching plan.

The Kernel of Good Strategy

The core thesis in summed up in chapter 5 in this way:

“The kernel of a strategy contains three elements: a diagnosis, a guiding policy, and coherent action.”

Firstly Rumelt outlines the importance of situational analysis. He argues that the key question to situational awareness, and therefore crucial to effective strategic thinking, is: what’s going on?

The opportunity is this: “The big ‘aha’ to gain sustainable competitive advantage—in other words, a significant, meaningful insight about how to win.”

Then, in Rumelt’s words:

“To obtain higher performance, leaders must identify the critical obstacles to forward progress and then develop a coherent approach to overcoming them.”

The author does not suggest any particular approaches, apart from using good questions, to do the situational analysis. I think that the SWOT analysis – although being so well known it is often scorned – can be a really useful tool to help accomplish this stage.

Once this diagnosis has taken place the next step is to create a guiding policy. A guiding policy is about coordinating and focussing action.

“The core of strategy work is always the same: discovering the critical factors in a situation and designing a way of coordinating and focusing actions to deal with those factors.”

The third part is about coherent action. Rumelt states:

“Many people call the guiding policy “the strategy” and stop there. This is a mistake. Strategy is about action, about doing something. The kernel of a strategy must contain action.”

There is an interesting comparison to make between Rumelt’s kernel and John Boyd’s decision cycle, the OODA loop. Rumelt has approached a process from a strategic and longer-term view, Boyd from a tactical view, based on the quick decisions needed by fighter pilots, but the overlap in terms of decision-making is obvious. The Diagnosis of Rumelt’s approach relates to Observation and Orientation in Boyd’s model. Subsequently, the Guiding Policy can be seen as equivalent to the Decision stage of the loop. The similarity of Coherent Action to Action is self-explanatory.

Part 2: Sources of Power

The next section, Sources of Power, outlines practical strategic approaches and how they can be applied. The principles expounds are:

• Using Leverage
• Proximate Objectives
• Chain-link Systems
• Using Design
• Focus
• Growth
• Using Advantages
• Using Dynamics
• Inertia and Entropy

In the final chapter of the section, Putting it Together, Rumelt applies his own theory and ‘sources of power’ to the case study of Nvidia, the computer company who rode the curve in demand for 3D graphics in their surge to success.

I have included some comment below on the chapters and concepts I found most helpful.

Using leverage

 “A strategy is like a lever that magnifies force.”

He describes strategic leverage as the having the following:

• Anticipation
• Insight as to where to apply
• Focussed application

In this idea he somewhat unifies the approach to strategic thinking across the corporate and military or political spheres:

“The most basic idea of strategy is the application of strength against weakness. Or, if you prefer, strength applied to the most promising opportunity.”

Focus

The idea of leverage links nicely to the concept of focus, which is another chapter that had key insights. As Rumelt notes:

“Strategy is mainly about focus.” And “the deeper meaning of focus—a concentration and coordination of action and resources that creates an advantage.”

Focussing resources, be that time, money, people or anything else is key. Many so-called strategies actually just spread resources thinly across an organisation in an uncoordinated way. This might maintain operations but it does not seize an opportunity, press an advantage or create growth.

Growth

The concept of growth is important, but growth is not strategy in itself: “(The CEO’s) “Grow by 50 percent” is classic poor strategy. It is the kind of nonsense that passes for strategy in too many companies. First, he was setting a goal, not designing a way to deal with his company’s challenge. Second, growth is the outcome of a successful strategy,”

Inertia and Entropy

Growth can bring it’s own challenges, as seen in the chapter on inertia and entropy as large organisations frequently suffer from negative sides of these inertia.

The downside of focussing resources to one part of an organisation is that some other parts of the same organisation will have less. I have found that effecting change in large, institutional organisations, there is considerable inertia that limits the speed of change.

Most of the most damaging things can be internal departments competing due to their fear of losing out. This undermines the focussed application of resources. To overcome this you need to crisis and sense of urgency that Kotter states that you need to lead change (1996). As Rumelt points out:

“Strategies focus resources, energy, and attention on some objectives rather than others. Unless collective ruin is imminent, a change in strategy will make some people worse off. Hence, there will be powerful forces opposed to almost any change in strategy. This is the fate of many strategy initiatives in large organizations.”

Achieving coordinated action is the key. When a large organisation is pulling together in the same direction you get the positives or inertia – a momentum that is hard to stop.

Part 3: Thinking like a Strategist

The final part of the book takes the approach from ‘doing’ to a way of ‘being’. Developing a stratagem is a process but being a strategist encompasses a way of thinking.

This is similar to the concept of having a growth or learning mindset. An element of that thinking is being alive to opportunity:

“In a changing world, a good strategy must have an entrepreneurial component. That is, it must embody some ideas or insights into new combinations of resources for dealing with new risks and opportunities.”

There is a science to thinking strategically, but the art of strategy comes through experience (Dixit, Nalebuff: 2008) and applying knowledge gained through lessons and mistakes.

Leadership Development: Master the Top Leadership and Life Skills

Better lead in life and work to maximise your success. Sign up and access materials for free!

Good Strategy Bad Strategy – In Summary

“A hallmark of true expertise and insight is making a complex subject understandable.”

In this sense Rumelt shows his true expertise as a strategist as his book makes the subject matter clear and easy to digest.

The simple concept of the kernel of a strategy and the three elements of: a diagnosis, a guiding policy, and coherent action, sum up his approach and provide a useful model for those wanting to develop strategy or think strategically.

To that end Good Strategy Bad Strategy should be on every leaders’ reading list. Leadership, strategy and decision-making are all intrinsically linked and any reading and research into one will aid the others.

For further reading or listening you can check out these resources:

The Best Books on Decision Making and Thinking

---

References:

Boyd, J R. (1995) The Essence of Winning and Losing, 28 June 1995 a five slide set by Boyd.

Dixit A K and Nalebuff B J (2008) The Art of Strategy, W W Norton and Company

Kotter, J P (1996) Leading Change, Boston: Harvard Business School Press

Oxford (2019) Lexico, Dictionary, https://www.lexico.com/en

Porter, M E. (1980) Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitor, New York: Free Press

Management guru Peter Druker reportedly said “culture eats strategy for breakfast”, but other leaders and strategists express similar sentiments. The underlying message is, it does not matter how good a plan you have, if you don’t consider the human element then your strategy is unlikely to succeed.

Having worked with numerous companies on developing a strategy it can be all too obvious when grand plans are doomed to failure. One key metric is the delta between a company’s stated values and the behaviour of the people within the organisation. But to address this gap you first need to understand the organisational culture.

Why strategy fails

A strategy is a plan of action to achieve a long-term goal. As Richard Rumelt notes in his book Good Strategy Bad Strategy, a good strategy must diagnose the challenge to overcome, create a guiding policy to address that challenge, and then produce coherent actions that ensure that the policy is carried out.

Most people get the essentials of what strategy is. Where it generally fails is in the third element, the implementation; ensuring people carry out the actions is where things go wrong. This is often because the board level strategists fail to take culture and values into consideration. Actions are just behaviours, but real change is not brought about by one single action. It is the compounding effect of multiple actions over time. If you want to shift the way you want people to act you need to change their normal routines.

Routines are just one element of organisational culture. Changing our personal habits can be difficult, so why – do leaders – expect to change a whole organisation and the habits of hundreds, if not thousands of people, just because they say so? Making this sort of transformation requires careful consideration and to make a change in behaviour you first need to understand all the facets of the culture of a given group.

The importance of understanding organisational culture

Every group of humans has a culture of some sort. Every family, company, and sports team – let alone a country or nation-state – has its own culture. The problem is when we live within these tribes the culture is so ingrained, we often don’t think about it or can struggle to express it.

Therefore, it is useful to have a model to examine and explain a culture. The Cultural Web, the tool developed by Johnson and Scholes, is a simple and effective lens to use in this context. Johnson and Scholes break down culture into six component parts: stories, symbols rituals and routines, power structures, organisational structure, and controls.

The Cultural Web

The Cultural Web comprises of the following components:

Stories

These are the past events people talk about. The shouted successes and the whispered failures. The discussions around the water cooler. These narratives carry important messages about the underlying values of a people group. The language used to express these stories – the jargon, acronyms, and lingo of a group – are just as important. Every tribe has its own dialect.

Symbols

These are not just flags, badges, and company logos. Symbols are also expressed in how people dress, office décor, even in a preferred brand of software and technology! Every item you see around you is the result of a choice influenced by a principle. For example, why have that type of coffee? Because it’s the highest quality, a trusted brand, or the best value? Understanding the decision can reveal a value judgement.

Rituals and routines

Every tribe has its own rituals and routines. The time when people start and finish work, what people do for lunch, even how (if at all) people celebrate birthdays and successes are all cultural rituals. Meetings are one fascinating way of examining culture. The routines of how a meeting is conducted, who sits where, who speaks when, and the language people use, all speak volumes about the culture and values of a group.

Organisational structure

There are always formal and informal structures in any group. Both need to be understood. An organisational chart may capture the official structure but what are the networks that exist, the webs hidden below those regimented lines? Look to see the tribes that gather; the smokers and the lunch-time runners as well as the project or function-based teams.

Power structures

Power derives from people and particularly the individuals who are decision-makers. These power structures do not always follow the official hierarchy either. For example, the personal assistant who manages access to an executive can wield power that outweighs their perceived grade in any management structure. Think: who are the internal influencers?

Controls

Controls are the systems, processes, and regulations that an organisation develops. These controls assist the conduct of work but also regulate behaviours. These can include things like financial controls, contracts, and company articles but there are also a host of unwritten rules and ways of working in any group. If you don’t think that is true, then just ask the newest member of the team about what they had to learn to be accepted into the clan.

---

Culture is manifest in behaviour

Once a culture is understood you can start to identify potential levers of change. But that still does not mean it is easy, if you don’t believe me just try changing the dress regulations for any given team!

We are all creatures of habit and therefore change at any level requires overcoming inertia. We all know this. Habits can be changed but think back to the last bad habit you tried to modify. It is not easy, even when you do identify the cues, routines and rewards in a habit loop.

Therefore, even if the intellectual argument for change is compelling, there is a huge work to be undertaken once a strategy is agreed upon. As John P. Kotter shows in Leading Change, you must have leadership and a plan to take people through the change, not just set the target. To develop a plan, you need to understand the psychology of influencing groups of people and gently motivate them to act in the right way. This is the essence of nudge theory; people need subtle cues, personal incentives, and positive reinforcement to change.

---

How values should be expressed to inspire action

One way to engage a whole team or organisation in the change process is through a discussion of values. Values are symbiotic with culture, as it is our shared principles and corporate beliefs that are expressed in the symbols, structures, and stories that we share in an organisation.

The problem is the behaviour of many individuals and teams are not aligned to the stated values of their organisation. This is often due to one of these three problems:

The wrong values

Sometimes a company just picks the wrong values. The values are generally not bad in themselves – virtues such as creativity, inclusivity or productivity are all good – but that does not mean they are the right values for that given group or capture the drivers for change in a strategy.

Corporate values need to express the key beliefs of that given group. They express how that team makes decisions, how they are different and most importantly why they behave that way. If you want to change the priorities of an organisation, as happens in strategy implementation, then the values need to align with that strategy.

If this is the problem – and values do not express either the current situation or strategy – then it is worth starting again, examining culture, and engaging as many team members as possible to identify the true values of the organisation and the core principles of the new strategy.

Poorly expressed values

Expressing values poorly is the next common problem. This is often the case when companies choose single virtue words to communicate their principles. Take the word creativity. I have seen creativity stated as a value for schools, legal teams, and accountancy firms, not just the obvious ones such as advertising teams, tech firms and artists.

So, if you pick a term like creativity, the question is, what does that mean within your given context? One simple way to improve the expression of a specific virtue is by coupling it with another word. Creativity could become continual creativity, collaborative creativity, playful creativity, or something else. But suddenly, with just adding one (or two) extra words that value statement becomes more personal to the group and can better express the way that value informs choices and behaviours.

Misunderstood values

And that thought on behaviours brings us nicely to the third point – misunderstood values. Even if a value is expressed succinctly it may still need further explanation to describe how that value informs the actions of that group.

Therefore, when considering corporate principles (or personal values for that matter), once the value has been identified and expressed, the next step is to define its meaning in terms of how it informs action. Every value needs a paragraph of explanation that unpacks how a value should inform the thought processes and behaviours of the team.

---

Expressing organisational culture through shared values 

So, don’t let your organisational culture eat your shiny new strategy for breakfast. If you want a strategy to succeed, having a good strategic plan is not enough. You need to bring strategy, culture, and values together. To do this you must:

• Understand the organisational culture
• Identify values that align that culture with the strategy
• Explain and demonstrate how those values should be expressed in behaviour and decision-making

This may not be a quick or easy process, but it is better to go slow than to race towards the strategy car-crash that is likely to happen if you try to enforce a change without following these steps. It is a thankless task – for managers and workers alike – to have to continually prod people to change direction.

But if a company’s strategy and values are aligned, and the team behaves according to those principles, then it is like a flywheel starting to turn. It builds up momentum to a point where the positive inertia pulls the organisation towards its goal. Then, as the boss, you can stop thinking about prodding and start thinking about what new ritual you might introduce to celebrate the success of the team!

The term Adaptive Leadership was coined by Harvard University professor Ron Heifetz in his 1994 book, Leadership Without Easy Answers. The theory of Adaptive Leadership addresses the strategic question of how to mobilise people to adapt to change.

We don’t have to think too far back to realise how important this concept is. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted how important it is to quickly adapt to new and fast-evolving circumstances. The Harvard Business Review was just one of the voices advocating Adaptive Leadership as the right sort of leadership model to assist in these sorts of situations.

But, Adaptive Leadership is not just relevant to crisis management. The pace of change in the business sphere demands an adaptive approach. For example, take the development of smartphones a decade ago, or now, the progression of AI; organisations that ignore these seismic technological shifts only put themselves in peril.

So how do we change and adapt to challenging environments? Ron Heifetz set out 5 strategic principles to guide leaders, and their teams, through this process.

5 strategic principles of Adaptive Leadership

These are the five strategic principles in simple terms:

1. Diagnose the situation.
2. Manage distress.
3. Identify distractions.
4. Delegate effectively.
5. Encourage challenge.

Heifetz’s original wording was more lengthy, and each concept needs a little more unpacking, so let’s look at each in more detail.

1. Diagnose the situation

The first step is problem diagnosis and understanding the situation. In the words of Heifetz:

“Diagnose the situation in light of the values at stake, and unbundle the issues involved.”

To analyse the circumstances Heifetz uses a simple problem typology and asks, what sort of problem do you face? Is it a technical or adaptive challenge? In this simple approach, a technical issue already has a known solution. These sorts of problems require management. Adaptive challenges are problems which have no precedent (such as AI) or ones that continue to evolve (like a pandemic) and therefore require leadership to address them. In this way, Heifetz reflects Keith Grint’s problem typology and technical issues are the same as tame problems, and adaptive challenges are synonymous with wicked problems.

One thing a leader can do to help at this stage is to ‘get on the balcony’ rather than being stuck ‘in the dance.’ In other words, a leader needs to take a physical or mental step back to gain perspective and assess the issue, slightly apart from the frenetic activity of the team. This concept is often referred to as leadership from the balcony and dance.

2. Manage distress

The need for change can lead to resistance and distress. People don’t resist change per se, in fact, people frequently embrace change when they see it as positive. For example, few people will turn down a pay rise!

But change can challenge values, assumptions and beliefs and therein lies the potential for conflict. Factions can form within a team, similar to the innovators, early adopters or laggards of the technological life cycle. The laggards bring dissent and resistance that provokes further discord.

Therefore, the leader must keep casting the vision and assessing the workforce in how they are progressing through the adoption curve. It requires judgement to do this and set the right pace for change. The Iceberg Model is a useful tool to help analyse these sorts of stresses.

Here, the ideal that Heifetz is expounding is to:

“Keep the level of distress within tolerable limits for doing adaptive work.”

Heifetz uses a pressure cooker analogy. The leader aims to keep the pressure up without allowing the vessel to blow up.

3. Identify distractions

The next step is to ensure that attention is focused on developing issues and not on less important distractions. Here once again the leader needs to do some diagnosis and identify which issues currently engage attention and differentiate between what is important and what is a distraction. When people find change difficult, they can adopt negative behaviours such as denying the issue, problem misdiagnosis, blaming others, delaying progress, or similar avoidance tactics. As Heifetz says:

“Identify the issues that engage the most attention and counteract avoidance mechanisms such as denial, scapegoating, pretending the problem is technical, or attacking individuals rather than issues.”

These negative behaviours must be identified, understood (once again, the Iceberg Model is useful here) and then challenged, to bring people back to the main issue.

4. Delegate effectively

One effective way of keeping people mission-focused is effective delegation. If you can give people tasks that allow them ownership of the problem – or at least keep them focussed on addressing it – then this will help to minimise distractions.

In my experience, it is productive for a leader to delegate to the point of pain, but only that far. In other words, it should be a little uncomfortable for the leader, who must trust the team member and also challenging for the individual being tasked, as the activity should stretch them. Or as Heifetz puts it:

“Allow people to take responsibility for the problem, but at a rate they can handle.”

In this way, the leader can place responsibility on the whole team while at the same time allowing development opportunities. But once again, the pressure cooker analogy applies. The team is put under stress to deal with the problem, but the leader needs to monitor levels of distress.

5. Encourage challenge

Voices of dissent can cause problems for leaders who are trying to encourage change, but a leader also must protect individuals who challenge them. This can be uncomfortable at times as these people can be a source of frustration to a person in authority, and destabilising for the team. Such people often seem unreasonable, but as George Bernard Shaw observed:

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

Organisations need people to challenge them, and all teams need atmospheres of psychological safety where members can raise objections or new ideas. Therefore, the leader has to:

“Protect those who raise hard questions, generate distress, and challenge people to rethink the issues at stake.”

These people, who bring the hard questions, are often leaders in their own right.

The difference between authority and leadership

And here Heifetz draws the distinction between leadership and authority. An authority is a decision maker, someone with a specific leadership role and responsibility within a structure. These formal structures are important for bringing direction, protection, and continuity to a team. But leadership can come from anyone, even outside of these formal structures. Leaders bring influence and provoke change, no matter their role. Leadership should be encouraged throughout an organisation to ensure innovation, creativity, and challenge to the status quo. These individuals, demonstrating this sort of leadership, will often have the freedom to provoke rethinking that authorities lack.

How to develop Adaptive Leadership

So, to become a leader who can effectively navigate change, adopt the five principles of Adaptive Leadership:

1. Diagnose the situation.
2. Manage distress.
3. Identify distractions.
4. Delegate effectively.
5. Encourage challenge.

In today’s rapidly changing environment – in business, politics or life – we must learn to adjust quickly and positively. In the words of the (unofficial) Marine Corps motto, as espoused by Clint Eastwood as Gunny Highway in heartbreak ridge,

“You adapt, you overcome, you improvise!”

When you can do this, and encourage others to do the same, then you are on the way to becoming an Adaptive Leader.

Why every leader should know David Patreaus’ 4 stages of creating and Implementing Effective Strategy

Who can you think of who has genuinely created and implemented an effective strategy?

Plenty of people profess to have done this but few have accomplished this feat on the international stage or at the Grand Strategic level.

As we will see, from someone who actually has some credibility (no, I don’t mean me!), an effective strategy can be implemented in 4 steps.

But before we get onto this, what does strategy really mean anyway?

It is an overused term, and this can cause confusion. You might hear someone say, “My strategic approach is to…” and then list a series of goals. That is not a strategy. Neither is it the same as a mission or vision statement.

Strategy made simple

Strategy comes from the Greek word Strategos, which means military general. The General was the commander who gave the overarching directive to an army; the conceptual framework of how to defeat the enemy.

We might not be facing a real-life enemy, but we are sure to face challenges, which is why modern interpretations of strategy substitute these terms. For example, Richard Rumelt, author of Good Strategy, Bad Strategy defines strategy as

“A strategy coordinates action to address a specific challenge.”

In other words, it is the ends, ways and means of success, which itself is another good definition of strategy, still used by militaries today.

“Strategy equals ends (objectives toward which one strives) plus ways (courses of action) plus means (instruments by which some end can be achieved).”
Colonel Arthur F. Lykke Jr

Somewhat unsurprisingly, in terms of practical application, examples and theoretical principles, the military is still a primary source for the understanding of strategy. David Petraeus (retired US Army General) is a classic example of someone who has created and seen through an effective strategy at a genuinely strategic level.

Who is General David Petraeus anyway?

For those unaware, David Petraeus is a retired General, who commanded at the highest levels, and is also a former Director of the CIA. Suffice to say, having wielded that degree of power, he knows a thing or two about strategy.

Most importantly he knows how to implement one.

This is perhaps best illustrated by his time as overall commander of coalition forces in Iraq in 2007. The situation he inherited was certainly a strategic problem.

At the start of 2007, the US military was sustaining around 100 fatalities per month and around 700 wounded, while civilian casualties were around 1500 a month. Baghdad was effectively lawless and local militias as well as insurgents, of various ideologies, rampaged around the country causing mayhem.

Yes, I hear some of you say, this was a problem partly of the coalition’s making, and yes, there you have a point. In fact, the lack of a coherent long-term political strategy (beyond the military one) in Iraq was a large cause of this situation. But the challenge in 2007 remained, and General Petraeus was chosen to tackle the immediate issue of the horrific death rate.

The Surge Strategy in Iraq

After going through proper problem analysis, Petraeus developed the ‘Surge’ strategy. On the face of things, this could have been seen as just an increase in troop numbers, but it was a lot more than that. The plan recognised that previously the military had been using many wrong ways and means. It needed new ideas. Therefore, the surge was not just an increase of 30 000 troops but also encompassed new counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine, changing the ways and means that would be used to stabilise the country (the ends).

The success of The Surge can be seen in numbers. Civilian casualties quickly reduced in 2007 and fatalities from mid-2008 to mid-2011 fell to around 200 a month. US fatalities dropped to fewer than 11 per month in the same period. Overall, the surge strategy resulted in nearly a ten-fold reduction of fatalities from 2006 figures.

Defence Secretary Robert Gates described Patreus’ ‘Surge’ campaign in Iraq in 2007 as the

“Translation of a great strategy into a great success in very difficult circumstances.”

Patraeus after the Surge

Petraeus did implement a successful strategy in Iraq but that does not make him perfect. He, like any senior leader, did not always succeed (he was not quite able to replicate the success of Iraq in Afghanistan due to the vastly different circumstances) and he messed up badly too (Petraeus had to step down as director of the CIA after it was revealed he was having an affair with his biographer).

As well as recognising that these failings just make Petraeus human, he is easier to respect in the aftermath as he has been willing to admit and address his faults (a virtue not seen in some very senior figures).

Petraeus, though nominally retired, is still very active. He is a visiting professor to prestigious universities across the world, and, due to his strategic wisdom, serves as an advisor and board member to multiple diverse organisations. So, even with his faults, his strategic mind is still highly valued.

Therefore, when he says something about strategy, I take note. Recently, he shared his four steps to developing an effective strategy at the Royal United Services Institute (the defence and security think-tank) and so I thought I would share these and some reflections upon his framework.

The 4 Steps of Developing a Highly Effective Strategy

Patreus describes the following four steps as his “intellectual construct for strategic leadership.” In other words, this is not just about creating a strategy, or having the leadership to implement one, it is both combined.

Task 1: Brainstorming

The first step is to get the big ideas right, and that is dependent upon understanding the problem. The problem is made up of various factors too, such as mission analysis (assessing what you must do) and situational analysis (getting a deep understanding of the circumstances).

You have a better chance of analysing the problem and coming up with novel solutions if you have real cognitive diversity. Petraeus sought out scholars and deep thinkers to help him with this problem analysis. This included people who would challenge ideas. This is vital as a leader surrounded by sycophants will eventually come undone from hearing what they want to hear rather than what they need to hear.

Once problem analysis is complete then the brainstorming can enter a phase of creating options or courses of action. Options are then evaluated, and the leader (commander) makes their decision of which course of action they want to pursue.

So, the key question for a leader at this stage is:

How can you create the best team to understand the problem and come up with creative solutions?

Task 2: Communicating

Once the leader has decided upon the preferred course of action, that big idea can then be communicated. Now the challenge is working out who you need to communicate to and how.

There may be many stakeholders inside and outside the organisation that need to hear the message. In the case of Petraeus, during The Surge it was not just the soldiers who needed to know the strategy; it was everyone from the Pentagon in the US and coalition partners, right through to the local population and insurgents.

And each stakeholder group has different information needs and so an engagement strategy becomes a sub-set of the overall strategy. This includes stakeholder mapping and thinking about how each group needs to be informed and what influence you want.

For example, Petraeus wanted to communicate with the local population and the end result was that he wanted trust and support – rather than hostility – so he needed to achieve a shift in mentality. Even for the coalition forces there needed to be a shift in mentality as they were going to have to change how they were going about their operations up to that point.

So, communication needs to be clear, as concise as possible and targeted to get people engaged and, where possible, empowered to support the strategy. When you are thinking of how to deliver the message a good starting point is The Rule of 3, which provides an easy structure to follow.

Therefore, the key question for the leader at this stage is:

Whom do I need to inform, how do I best communicate and what is the impact I want to have?

Task 3: Implementing

Once communicated, the next stage is implementation. This requires breaking down the big idea into an action plan. In military terms, this is the campaign plan where different lines of effort work together to achieve the desired end state.

But a good plan is not enough on its own. Effective implementation requires good leadership. The strategic leader knows how to adapt their style to best influence each team member or stakeholder. For example, influencing sceptics might require a more transactional approach as they might not buy into the vision of transformational leadership. So, the principal needs to be able to apply situational leadership whilst remaining authentic.

As with the brainstorming stage, the strategic leader needs a great team around them for the best chance of success. Being a strategic leader means selecting and supporting the right champions to lead each element of the plan.

Therefore, for implementation, the leader needs to ask:

How do I turn this strategic idea into an actionable plan and who can best realise each element?

Task 4: Assessing

Never assume a plan is set in stone. As Field Marshall Helmuth von Moltke stated:

“No plan survives contact with the enemy.”

In other words, it does not matter how good your idea is, when that plan interacts with the real world (and the many factors you could never foresee) the strategy will need to evolve.

We live in a rapidly changing world. Good leaders expect to refine their strategy is this VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous) environment. What’s more, the ability to assess how effective a strategy is, and then adapt plans to improve them, is the mark of a high-performing team as well as a great leader.

A high-performing team retains a growth mindset, learns from failure and drives their continual improvement by constantly assessing what to start, stop or continue within the given plan.

Therefore, for the leader at this stage, the critical question becomes:

How do we improve the plan and reinforce success; what do we need to start, stop, or continue doing?

The Strategic Cycle: How to Create and Implement an Effective Strategy

David Petraeus’s strategic framework is very simple on the surface. The four stages of brainstorming,communicating, implementing, and assessing, create an easy-to-remember cycle.

And strategy is cyclical. One situation and set of effects lead to another. This was particularly true for Petraeus who went from overseeing The Surge in Iraq to being the commander in Afghanistan. This was a very different set of circumstances but one impacted by his own strategy in Iraq (namely the draw of resources from one area to another).

You may not be playing on the world stage but whatever level of leadership you aspire to, this strategic cycle can help you. Even if you are just working on your own and facing some big problem, the stages still hold true.

So, think, what is the biggest challenge you are facing right now? What can you do to brainstorm new ways of addressing the issue? What do you need to communicate? How will you best implement the plan to resolve the issue and how can you keep assessing your progress?